QED XT25 Speaker Cable: Low Cost, High Quality?

Posted on 4th December 2017

Looking for a set of audiophile quality speaker cables that won’t break the bank? Paul Rigby checks out the latest contestant from QED, the XT25

Let’s say that you’ve saved hard for a new pair of speakers. Let’s say that you’ve just spent £200 on them. They turn up in the post. You’re all excited, as you have every right to be. You can’t wait to unpack them and plug them into the matrix that is your hi-fi system. A place were new musical realities are born? Oh yes.

And then? Damn it. Damn it. Damn it! Cables, cables, cables. How are you going to plug them in then, eh? You haven’t got any cables. You were so darned pumped up about the new oak finish, you forgot all about them. No problem, there’s an electrical shop down the road. So off you pop. And come back, a tad breathless, with some cable that may have cost you, what, let’s say £1.99 per metre? In the UK, Maplins is a good place to buy this stuff. I’m sure there’s a similar place where you live. Easy, eh?

So you connect the new speakers again – oh the wait! the frustration! the tension! – and you switch the hi-fi and you play a favourite LP and you wait in expectation as the needle drops and you hear the first 30 seconds of music and you walk into the corner and you cry and you cry a lot more. Because it sounds crap.

Why? Because the cable transfers lots of beautiful musical information. That’s ok, yes? Yes. Yes it is. Trouble is, cables like this just do a job. They can’t tell static from Santana. They don’t know noise (i.e cruddy masking horribleness that masks all of the fine detail and completely ruins your musical experience) and noise (Lou Reed, Sonic Youth and Merzbow). They transfer the musical signal but they also transfer anything that’s in the area and wants to hitch a lift. Noise again.

Well designed hi-fi cable exists to differentiate the good stuff from the bad stuff. That’s what I wanted to investigate here by reviewing the new QED speaker cables, the XT25.

You may have seen my recent news piece but, for those who missed it , the XT25 cable features a hollow LDPE filler covered by a host of OFC copper of 99.999% purity. That lot is covered by aluminium Mylar and the entire casing is protected by a clear LDPE outer jacket.

SOUND QUALITY

I began the sound tests with Fight The Power from the Isley Brothers album, The Heat In On a fierce, high tempo piece of funk with a rich and full soundstage that is full of layered instruments.

This track is packed with excellent vocal performances. There’s real drive and emotion behind them. The musicianship is superb too. For this level of speaker cable though, what really gets me are the hand claps. I know, not exactly exotic but the hand claps are the cause of real issues for me and I would gladly spend serious money on speaker cables just to control the things. The problem is that hand claps on this track can highlight excessive noise within the cable. The problem with many budget cables on the market is that they have absolutely no idea how to translate the hand clap into, oddly enough, a hand clap. What you get is a sharp, head-ache inducing snappy punch. Over and over it goes and out comes the Paracetamol. What the hand claps are doing is hitting exactly the right spot in the upper midrange that emphasises a noise-induced edge of clinical emphasis.

This troublesome area is – praise the Lord – handled superbly by the XT25 cables. The cables produce, for the price, an incredible hand clap. You may laugh but the midrange delivery of this sound is indicative of the rest of the sonic performance of this cable. The hand claps here are tonally realistic with a balance between the striking of the hands but also the detail that sounds produces.

The other issue is the treble. Most budget cables offer a cymbal hit that sounds hard and unforgiving.

Imagine a perfect cymbal crash. Then take that cymbal crash in your hands, leave it out all night in the back yard during winter and then hear it the next morning packed in frost. That’s how a cymbal sounds via a poor budget cable. It sounds totally manufactured and brittle.

The XT25s soften the treble while retaining detail. Hence, for the price point, treble sounds exquisite, providing a soft sheen, packed with information and a nice reverb decay. All of these positives are helped by the low noise performance.

Remember this is funk and this particular track stems from 1975. Do you know how an electric guitar, especially from this period, sounds when you plug it into a meaty guitar amp? There’s the rich crackling sound where the contact is made, mixing a heavy electrical feedback with power and a slight hum. Playing that guitar, you can hear this weight and grunt. It’s this personality that the XT25s access and most budget cables ignore. Hence, you get a much more interesting ‘groove thang’ going on. The vibe is rich with portent.

Bass too is much more characterful than the norm with an organic response that provides a more emotive realism and less of the horrible synthetic effects that some cables provide.

So much for energy and dynamism. I turned to Nina Simone and a simple arrangement. Just the gal and her piano singing Seems I Never Tire of Loving You. I’ve said this before, but the piano is a tough nut to crack for any hi-fi. It’s packed with potentially chaotic frequencies that hi-fi component sometimes fail to control. Hence, you often hear midrange smearing and, in the lower registers, bass booming. In the worst cases, pianos can sound positively unlistenable. The XT25s were remarkably disciplined here, mostly because the low noise aided clarity and midrange insight while the transparent nature of the upper frequencies helped the dynamic reach of the instrument.

It was a similar case with the highly emotive nature of the Simone voice. My goodness, she could belt out a song when she felt like but her vocal was complex with range and vibrato that complicated a song and personalised it. The XT25 traced the flow of the vocal well so there was no midrange confusion.

CONCLUSION

Offering a sense of clarity in terms of midrange performance, with a low noise expression that aided both transparency but also tonal accuracy, the XT25 cables bring a sense of hi-fi luxury at a low price. A very low price, in audiophile terms. If you find yourself with a pair of bell wire speaker cables you owe it to upgrade immediately. Dive into your car, hail a taxi, hi-jack your nearest 747 or jump on the back of the nearest jogger and direct him to (not Cuba but) the nearest QED dealer. The change will be a big relief to your ears. Although the local chemist might suffer in Paracetamol sales.

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I’ve been a journalist and editor for 30 years and still retain my good humour. Who’d have thought? I have worked within a range of industries, writing for hundreds of national magazines and newspapers in the UK, Europe and the USA covering: aviation, music, computer technology, computer gaming, hi-fi, mobile technology, home automation, lady’s lifestyle, plastic model making, antiques and more.
I currently write for national magazines in the subjects of business, music, hi-fi and general technology.

30 Comments

Geoffrey

It’s all relative to the price, Geoffrey. In that price point, in comparison to its immediate competition, when judged with other products you can buy for a similar price… Please bear all of that in mind. It’s not a super cable. Just an excellent low budget design.

Geoff

7th December 2017 at 10:30 pm

I understand i think. Cables are tricky i guess, I have vandenhul. Not gonna change soon. But i really like this cable. But saving for a new amp first. Maybe the new brio. Not quite sure yet. Keep the reviews coming. Great stuff!

Thanks Geoff – that’s a good point you raise though. Whenever you read a review of mine, please bear in mind that my pros/cons are related to the price point and the immediate competition of that product.

Rob

Hi Rob – both will serve you fine for those music genres. They offer a balanced overview. There’s plenty of detail up top but also organic bass. The 40s offer superior sound quality, overall in terms of detail. If you can afford them, go for the 40s. If not, no worries, the 25s are excellent and will provide sterling service.

Paul Lockett

I currently use TQ speaker cables/digital, Vertex AQ interconnects/power blocks and Studio Connections mains. If I review budget gear, then I tend to use the QED interconnects and possibly Black Rhodium, QED or TQ speaker cables.

Paul Lockett

2nd April 2018 at 1:16 pm

Many Thanks, Paul. I’m very soon to be replacing my 20+ year old Marantz CD-63 mk II KI Signature CD player, so I’m looking carefully at interconnects for the new machine. Your advice is much appreciated.

Lawrence Barnes

Hi Lawrence – all of the threads are always open 🙂 Be assured that no part of the site is never closed. If you ever have a question about anything on this website, please fire away. Onto your point, can you elaborate please? You’ll need to use the speaker cables to connect the speakers to a receiver and that’s it. You’ll only need interconnects to connect a receiver to another box, like a turntable or somesuch. So, you answer your question, yep, they can be used on their own. If I haven’t addressed your question fully, though, please give me a shout.

Hi Michael – hmmm, if you have fundamental issues with your hi-fi Michael then I wouldn’t look towards applying a plaster over them in the form of cables. It’s good money chasing bad. Cables are there to enhance what you have, to remove noise and enhance the signal transfer not to act like an EQ. I would urge you to look at the system itself, the room, other ancillaries you may have, etc before looking at cables.

Michael Larsen

20th March 2019 at 9:03 am

The balance is towards the more sparkling highs and lack some energi in the lows to compliment the highs from the silver micro. Like the open sound the silver micro has but i feel its to the thinner and brighter side of neutral.

Personally i know use supra classic 2.5 might not sound better but the balance between the highs and lows are better then the silver micro.

Matt

Matt

4th May 2019 at 9:45 am

Hi Paul,

If I may ask one final question, having decided against the Classic 79 and instead decided to go for something like the Chord Company C-Screen or the XT25 (having disregarded the Clearway and XT40 due to budget restrictions), how would you describe the differences between the two, and what might be more appropriate for my budget setup?

A chap in Richer Sounds recommended the Clearway (or failing that the C-Screen) as he felt my system would benefit more from warmth and punch than space and detail which the budget amp probably lacks, so isn’t there to reproduce. For what it’s worth I favour a spacious, detailed ‘there in the room’ type sound – but only if my system is capable of producing that, which realistically the amp probably isn’t capable of doing.M

I’d be very grateful for your thoughts. If buying a new amp, say, I’d take my gear in for a demo. That doesn’t seem worthwhile for budget speaker cables….

Hi Matt – that advice makes me shudder 🙂 I firmly believe that you should never, ever choose cables as some sort of EQ fix to correct problems in an amp, etc. Correct the amp instead. It’s like taking Paracetamol to dull a bigger problem. That’s not what buying good quality cables is all about. Good cables are there to reveal more music by lowering noise, shifting the music signal successfully and quickly, etc. If you are ever told to buy this or that cable to enhance this or that frequency of an amp, speakers, CD player, etc then you need to buy a different and better quality hi-fi component. Also, if a cable adds a tonal colour to your hi-fi, then choose a different set of cables. Cables should be transparent. They should never ‘add’ anything. That said, both QED and Chord offer excellent products and I would encourage you to buy the best you can afford. I’d only pick the QED because I know that product.